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do?" Her voice actually trembled, but they came to the truck where the men were talking and laughing together, and she said no more.
    Marly felt wide awake again.
    "Marly," Mr. Chris said, boosting her onto the truck, "your father says when school's out, you're coming up for the whole summer. You and I'll do some looking around, what do you say? I'll introduce you to every mouse I know. And every bird. And trees and flowers. Why, you haven't seen anything around here yet!"
    "That'll be wonderful," she said. So she could go with him, she thought, and it wouldn't matter whether Joe would take her or not.
    "You know what I'll promise you?" Mr. Chris asked. "Every weekend you come until school's out, I promise you
at least one new miracle.
"
    "All right!" she cried. The engine of the truck began to roar. Good night! Good night! The wide fields blinked under a moon. The woods looked dark and scary on the edges. But then there was a light—and another light—
    "That next light's ours!" Joe said.
    As they went into the house, Daddy began to sing again, without either being asked or told. He just suddenly started to sing that old song that starts, "Be it ever so humble..."
    That's the miracle for this week,
Marly thought. It was better than the sugarhouse or the magic trick. She thought about it as she fell asleep in the very old bed where Mother had slept when she was a little girl.

5. Pancakes
    Mr. Chris kept his promise. He more than kept it, because once spring started one miracle at a time was nothing.
    Actually it was two weeks before Marly even got back to Maple Hill again. The first week Mother had a bad cold and couldn't make the long drive. Daddy telephoned from Chris's house, and everybody got to talk to everybody. Daddy said it had been so warm for two days that week he'd worked outside in the sun. But still Mother was too sniffly to go.
    Marly cried, wondering which miracle she was going to miss. Besides, there wasn't going to be very much more sugaring. But nothing could be done about Mother's nose, after all. "Marly, you make me feel worse than I do already," Mother said, blowing and blowing her red nose.
    So Marly didn't say another word.
    Then there was a big blizzard, and a foot of snow fell in one night. Nearly April! Everybody had been going around with their coats over their arms; people in the streets smiled at each other. The park looked like something bright would be happening any minute; the lilac trees were dried out in the sun, and bumps started swelling out on the brown boughs. But when the cold came back, all in one night, it seemed as if winter was starting over, and everybody was disgusted. People didn't smile at each other, or if they did, you wouldn't know it because their mouths were tucked under their scarves and their collars. Marly loved her new boots and scarves and gloves in the fall. But now they looked dingy and felt heavy when she put them on.
    Daddy wrote a long letter. "You people in cities don't need to think about the weather. Down there it's just a matter of getting yourselves out of one door and into another. But it's different up here! What a storm! Chris says nothing's as important in the country as the weather; he's given me an almanac."
    The snow went away fast this time, though. When they finally got on the way again, the drive was beautiful all the way. Snow still lay in places where there was shade all the time, but it wasn't anywhere else. Some winter wheat fields were already green.
    There was some gravel on the hill where they had stopped before, and the car went right along. But Mother stopped part of the way up the hill and said Marly and Joe could run up to the sugarhouse and see if Mr. Chris was there. But he wasn't. The buckets had been taken down from the trees and lay upside down on the ground. The big pans were turned over, and the fire was out.
    Joe felt as sad as Marly did, she could tell. It was sad to see a place all empty and cold that had been so bright and